A look at the gaps in the lectionary.
This week: the gap between Proper 9C and Proper 10C.
As a preacher, the lectionary is a godsend. And like a movie studio demanding the director cut essential material to shorten a film’s running time, many of the lectionary’s jumps feel like an unfortunate necessity.
But I’ve long found this tradeoff to be untenable. For people to grow deep spiritually, we need fewer sequels of the Amazing God-Man and more continuity of what Jesus is actually doing. Much of what is left on the cutting-room floor is actually essential for this kind of deeper understanding.
As I preached on Sunday, what the lectionary skipped over for Proper 9C (Luke 10:1-11, 16-20) was the challenging bit. In the context, it makes a certain sense to keep the focus on the sending and the returning; not what Jesus is mumbling while they’re gone.
But what we miss is who and what Jesus is actually condemning. In verse 12, he condemns those who reject peace. Then in 13-15, those who wield power to oppress. These verses connect what is antithetical to peace: violence and oppression. Rather than paint a picture of hypocrisy on the part of Jesus, they actually clarify what peace actually is.
So in this way, the lectionary’s theatrical cut may be a fair representation of what Luke 10 is about. But it actually removes the part most western Christians most need to hear about peace: that our view of peace is too small. And more importantly, that peace and violence aren’t in an honest, equal negotiation with each other.
It Worked!
This week’s In-Between is just as small: Luke 10:21-24.
[Here’s the whole chapter for reference.]
Given the context of Jesus sending the 70 out to all the nations to make and proclaim peace, this one is really significant and worth gnawing on.
Whenever I tell this story in a paraphrase, I always make a big show of it. Jesus sends them out saying: go do the things I can do. And I’m not sure if that really registers until they’re on someone’s porch and knocking. Then it dawns on them I’m supposed to do what now?
But then they come back and they’re all like
Holy cats, Jesus! It worked!
The shock and surprise of these regular people doing miracles has got to be one of the most overlooked aspects of the gospels outside of Pentecostalism.
But really, the last line from last week is the doozy few of us preached on:
“Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
Jesus warns them about power and pride. Jesus is normally all about the celebrating, so he’s not getting skunky here. It’s caution: don’t love the power, love that God loves you.
See the connection between the power he condemns and his fear for the disciples?
So God hides the truth?
Then in the In-Between, Jesus prays out loud, John’s-Gospel-style. And it’s about the last thing I want to hear Jesus pray in Luke. It’s essentially this: Thanks, God for hiding the truth.
But, of course, it’s more than that. It’s actually Thanks for hiding the truth from the wise. Because the truth is actually revealed to infants. Not kids. Infants. So God has given truth to the pre-verbal.
Then in a similarly John-like fashion, Jesus describes having “all things” that are God’s and that he gets to reveal these things to (apparently worthy) humans.
So, I’ve got to be honest. I pretty much hate this part. I’m kind of glad we’re skipping it.
But wait. Before we get too judgey, Jesus turns to his disciples and is all
Thank God you guys can see what kings and rulers can’t.
So here’s a really important idea that may redeem this whole section for me: verse 24.
“For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.”
It’s that word desire.
These powerful people “desired to see what you see”. Let’s think of this literally, possessively. Because what is central to kings and rulers: possession and control. And what is desire but seeking to possess what one does not.
Kings and even prophets see knowledge and truth as possessions to wield as instruments of power. I’m reminded of Solomon, whose desire for wisdom to best serve his people was lauded by God. But what did he actually do with it? He hoarded the world’s wisdom, enslaved his own people, and became a global arms dealer.
So the blessing, like the warning in verse 20, is about having the right sense of heart toward God and all of creation.
Jesus is protecting the world from itself
So what if this in-between prayer and blessing are not about hiding the truth and keeping people in the dark as much as it is about protecting the world from weaponized wisdom?
Recall those disturbing moments in chapter 9 when John card-check an independent healer; then turns around with his brother James and asks if Jesus wants to fire-bomb a whole (Samaritan!) city. Jesus has plenty of reason to fear letting anybody see the truth. Because we’re likely to find a justification for hate in it somewhere.
But infants, dependent on Mom and Dad to survive, loving with their whole hearts and eye-wide soaking up the world can handle it. There’s no ego in the way.
Preparing the way
When Jesus describes to the disciples who their neighbor is (the Good Samaritan – Proper 10C) it is after they’ve wrestled with their own impulse to hate and the abstraction of their ignorance.
Jesus is trying to show them God’s true desire for creation and why, even they, can’t be entirely trusted with all the world’s knowledge.
It reminds me of philosophers posing the problem of choosing who to save. You’ve probably heard the scenario: a runaway train car that’s going to mow down 9 people on a bridge. But if you divert the car, it will mow down one person on another track.
The moral philosopher recognizes that people can’t choose between the two. Particularly since choosing to divert the train to kill the one means taking an action, so the person bears more moral responsibility for her death by choosing to redirect the train.
But when they make it into a more abstract, economic problem, people recognize a moral complicity in inaction and therefore are more prone to protect the 9 rather than the 1.
Whenever I’ve heard this problem posed, it often bears the weight of one of the two options being seen as “right”. Somehow it is both a paradox and has a proper solution.
But in truth, this is a faulty view of the nature of our moral relationship to pain and loss. The scenario’s mandate that someone must die in this logic puzzle while imbuing responsibility on a single person to choose between other(s) living and dying imposes trauma on the chooser more than it does moral clarity.
Reframing the scenario
So now imagine Jesus tells this very conundrum to his followers. They are no doubt weighing their choice heavily. Who should die? How will I hold this responsibility? What if I do nothing?
Then he says, that a passenger, who knows nothing of trains, walks up to the engine, and pulls the brake and the train stops. Then she jumps out and tends to the people tied to the tracks.
In a really important way, this is what Jesus’s parables do. They break these carefully curated scenarios.
Yes, Jesus cheats! He breaks up a no-win scenario precisely because we made it a no-win scenario! We’ve boxed ourselves in!
In other words, we’ve concocted a scenario to divide and separate, to kill and oppress others. Then we have the audacity to make everyone assume it has to be that way And God wants us to!
Jesus’s teachings, like this week’s parable, sound like this:
Let’s disrupt your scenarios so you can see the truth. Such as this: conductors aren’t the only ones who can solve problems on trains. Sometimes we’re taught the wrong thing! So now, what does this wisdom tell you about your neighbor?
And what does it tell you about responsibility to each other?